Can it still be called a "raid" anymore?

[Kalise]

Trash mobs are boring. Trash pulls are boring. Why are we asking for trash pulls in 2019?

Trash mobs are boring only when they're created to be boring.

WoW has had plenty of times when Trash Mobs were interesting to fight (I mean, don't look at Unsub from Azeroth or Warlords of Boredom expansions...)

I remember raids such as Blackwing Descent, where you before Magmaw, 2 big bad trash enemies that needed to be tanked, that had stacks they built up forcing tank swaps (While also keeping them apart from each other). Trash before Atramedes having a bunch of unique skills and whenever you killed one of them, each remaining enemy was fully healed and gained the skill of the killed enemy in addition to their own unique skill (With the last enemy being super OP with all the skills).

Raids like Firelands that had things like the trash before Alysrazor that had unique mechanics to content with (Making the big birbs shoot fire at the eggs/each other). Trash before Baleroc that you either needed to be able to DPS down fast, or you had to deal with the mini-boss they summoned.

Raids like Ulduar that had mini-bosses galore. Some of which became optional "Hard Modes" for certain bosses (Such as Freya being more powerful the more keepers you left up. But dropping better loot as a result)

Or even Hyjal Summit which had trash that was, in of itself, like a collection of FATEs, where you'd have to fight off waves of enemies and protect NPC's (Which, to be fair, was a little tedious but mostly because the final wave spawned the boss which meant wipes had you doing all the waves from the start again...)

Trash can be designed to be as interesting as actual boss fights. Especially when you consider that some boss fights are Council style fights which makes them essentially big Trash >.> Can easily apply the same mechanics to "Trash" mobs. While also making them worthwhile, by letting them give loot.

It's just that designers for content tend to relegate Trash to just being annoying and worthless speed humps in the path of killing bosses so put 0 effort into making them interesting or worth fighting...

[Penthea]

Why is it still called a "raid" when it drops you straight into a circular/square room with the boss in it? Isn't that a "trial"?

Because it has multiple parts within the same tier. Trials are singular. I get what you're saying but that is the difference.

I think 8 man raids need to take a page out of the 24 man raids' book and make them actual raids again. When you queue in and it just drops you into a fight with the boss, it's boring.

Alexander had trash. The reason why Omega doesn't is because in lore he is literally not very interested in creating trash. He wants to create the ultimate combat monster, so he mostly focuses on making bosses. The Omega trash is fought in the solo duties.

You could structure it to have multiple bosses, each with it's own loot pool. 1-3 mini-bosses that drop minor things like upgrade tokens or rare crafting materials, just to name a couple things off the top of my head. Alternate paths that change the way the raid works, maybe even optional puzzles or battles that reward you with additional cool stuff for clearing them.

Part of what's attractive about raiding in FFXIV is that you don't need to spend a ridiculous amount of time to do it. The lack of trash and mini bosses (that have loot which would inevitably become irrelevant quickly to any decent raiding team) means players get to spend more time on the actual challenging content.

Trash and mini bosses can be fun when they're new but they become dull after a while, no matter how well they're designed. Anything that's not an actual boss has a shorter shelf life when it comes to how interesting they are to fight and how good their loot is. Which means they sooner become a waste of time.

I'm sure some are going to spout something like 'that's too much wasted time, just gimme muh loot', but personally, I find the way raids are currently structured to be extremely shallow & lacking, no matter how colorful the actual fight is. I just wish they'd do something to spice them up a bit, or at least not just give us a trial fight and call it a raid.

A lot of what you're looking for is already in alliance raids.

[Satarn]

Its not, look at the deep dungoens, there is literally no reason to not make checkpoints to save, so a static can progress step by step. They surely could...

"Seems our AST can't make it tonight, guess we need to grab a sub- Oh never mind, we can't because the comp is locked, guess we do no progress today."
Also rip PF and DF(which is used quite a lot by JP raiders). We'd also lose the ability to skip weeklies we no longer need loot from, so we can get more relevant prog while raiding on tight amount of hours per week. Not to mention no longer being able to just join friends or random PFs to help with their prog and kills. Or doing log and meme runs on alt jobs.

While I'd like to see more dungeon-esque raids, looking at how coils worked, with t3 especially, as well as deep dungeons(and complaints form people about how hard it is to get 4 people together consistently btw, not everybody can raid with a static), I don't believe FFXIV's spagetti code would really allow for that without being very clunky and inconvenient.

Another issue is, as previously mentioned by others, SE's apparent inability to design good trash mob encounters. Trash at floors 80-99 of HoH is somewhat engaging(which boggles my mind as to why eureka mobs aren't more like this), but they would probably still be hella boring in 8 man raids, with none of the other Deep Dungeon elements.

[Kuroka]

Although to be fair, Omega's story sort of makes that difficult. He's a big robot whipping up arenas for you as and when so you can fight stuff and he can watch.

"Creating test subjects to messure current party setting..." lore fixed xD


You could as well make it so its personal progress, you still could join lower tiers too, that problem is only cause the party is part of the difficulty in HoH... much like the game now checks for your clear for the chests, theres no reason at all they cant do the same for the areas progress.

[ApolloGenX]

Yes, we used to "raid" zones.... now there are raid instances that are basically just trials. I also don't consider 8 person groups a "raid".... but I was in 72 mans in EQ, so my definition is probably out of date.

[cicatriz313]

I think you can have issues with the idea of having raiding content without massive areas/trash pulls, but the issue shouldn't be in the name of "raid", lol. A raid is just an attack with a group of people...

[Kalise]

Yes, we used to "raid" zones.... now there are raid instances that are basically just trials. I also don't consider 8 person groups a "raid".... but I was in 72 mans in EQ, so my definition is probably out of date.

Well, for a lot of MMO's "Raids" are for 2x party. Which normally would be 10 people (2x 5 player parties). So for FFXIV it could mean 8 people (2x 4 player parties, or 1 full party)

It could also mean 16 people I guess... 2x Full Parties (Though Alliance Raids are 3x Full Parties for 24 people)

But yeah... For the most part large raids are out of date. It's too hard to get high numbers of people interested in raiding, because "Muh lewt!"...

I think you can have issues with the idea of having raiding content without massive areas/trash pulls, but the issue shouldn't be in the name of "raid", lol. A raid is just an attack with a group of people...

Context is a powerful thing in language.

"Raid" has a technical definition within the English language.

However, "Raid" in an MMO setting often refers to a specific kind of content. Notably being a Dungeon that is larger, has a larger party entering it and is often the "End-Game" PvE content.

In FFXIV we have "Trials" which are categorized by their larger than Dungeon size (Full Party vs Light Party) and are basically a single Boss Fight in an arena. Which is in a separate category to "Raids" (Including in the DF)

When Raids start to just emulate Trials then there is room to have an issue of Raids not being "Raids", despite the technical definition of the word "Raid" in the English language (Which could also refer to Dungeons as "Raids" too)

It would be akin to if Trials started to require only a Light Party and have you fight through a bunch of trash on your way to take out 3-4 bosses... Basically becoming Dungeons.

There really should be more clear delineation between the 3 different types of PvE content: Dungeons, Trials and Raids. With regards to structure, difficulty and rewards.

Unless their plan is to just outright remove Raids and just put them under the "Trials" name...

[Drakkaelus]

The problem is the concept of, "trash".

Trash mobs
Trash loot
Trash this
Trash that

Of course people don't want to waste their time on that. It's why you don't really see people out in the world just fighting random monsters. It's not engaging enough to be fun, and it's not rewarding enough to put up with the tedium. As long as that's the case, people aren't going to want to bother with it.

[Arrhin]

Generally, somebody is going to complain about something the devs do, the playerbase is to wide and to varied. The Raid group however, is comprised of mostly like minded people so I don see what is so hard about SE givin us deep, satisfying, and challenging raids. I did all of Coil (and yes T1-T5 was the bestest imo), all of Alexander NM (Who didn't, it was frikkin playland) and some of Alex Savage. I dropped out of raiding partly because my work schedule changed, but mostly because the raids themselves got kinda boring and idk...just boring. It also seemed like the community got much more toxic at some point too, on Aether anyways. I agree they could, and should do better with this stuff, I'd take some more minibosses! Especially if they had some decent drops! And yes, more "choose your direction" type things, so we can try different strategies based on party composition, maybe break that "X class for X Savage" mould, Yaya T2! Some good comments and suggestions here, some not so much, but just remember, we've all seen that "Can't we have just 1 button Combo's my fingers hurt" thread in here before. I doubt many DO take these forums serious at SE....

[Dasya]

I kinda agree with OP. The areas just need to be bigger in way.

Coil and Alexander, you're going through these large areas and the all connect and give a feeling of how expansive the place is. It doesn't need trash mobs. Even the short path for Twintania, or the various places in Alex where you just had to run through some halls made it feel bigger.

Omega was just Creature of the Week in a Holodeck. I found Omega terribly boring because of this and didn't even bother with most of Savage this time around.

edited a typo